Salisbury U. President Apologizes for Facebook Photos

Plenty of students have been embarrassed by photos on the social-networking site Facebook, but university presidents have dodged that fate, until now.

Janet Dudley-Eshbach, president of Salisbury University, removed her Facebook profile on Monday after a reporter from the local WBOC-TV asked her about photographs from a family vacation to Mexico that had appeared on her personal page since February.

In one picture, Ms. Dudley-Eshbach is shown in her bathing suit, playfully waving a stick toward a Hispanic man who is hugging her daughter, Cara. The caption said, “I ended up having to beat off the Mexicans because they were constantly flirting with my daughter.”

Another picture showed a tapir, a mammal, with an arrow pointing to its sex organ. A caption called it the “animal with the world’s largest” genitalia.

In a statement, Ms. Dudley-Eshbach apologized for the photos, which she said she intended to be humorous.

“My understanding was that, with my privacy settings in Facebook, my page could be viewed only by those to whom I granted access,” she said.

Across the Chesapeake Bay, at Towson University, five sororities were placed on probation after photographs showing students drinking at a September campus event surfaced on Facebook, according to The Examiner, of Baltimore. —Don Troop